


Of Prophets and Losses

by TextualDeviance



Series: The Raven and the Dove [54]
Category: Vikings (TV)
Genre: M/M, Navel-Gazing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-14
Updated: 2016-08-14
Packaged: 2018-08-08 16:38:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,102
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7765240
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TextualDeviance/pseuds/TextualDeviance
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Alone with his thoughts while Ragnar and Lagertha are in Hedeby, Athelstan finds himself finally free to contemplate his own place in the world. Lost for answers, he turns to a surprising source.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Of Prophets and Losses

**Author's Note:**

> Set during the "Stones and Bones" portion of Athelstan's journals; in the middle of 3x05.

It was done. Though it seemed but little time had passed since Athelstan began the project, having so few reasons to leave his comfortable home—so few people who wanted to be friendly with him while Ragnar and Lagertha attended business in Hedeby—meant he easily spent entire days sitting at his table, candles burning down to nubs as he slowly, carefully filled page upon page with images and stories of his time in Kattegat.

As each installment took shape, his memories of the past several years returned clearly to mind, and he found himself thinking on them with new perspectives. Being effectively alone for several days like this, for perhaps the first time in his life, meant he was finally without the direct influence of powerful men. No Father Cuthbert. No Ecbert. No Ragnar. He had official loyalty to the latter—he passed a finger over the band encircling his arm—but his mind and spirit were free to wander where they would, without immediate concerns of what someone else wanted from him. 

He once had told Lagertha that he found freedom in service. He believed that letting go of his own sense of self relieved great burdens of responsibility. All he needed to do was ensure that he was serving the great men he had pledged to—and through them, the Divine—and no other matters need plague him.  Absent this duty, his thoughts began to wander. 

In the past couple of years, to solve his ongoing sense of being at a loose end without national or religious loyalty, he had instead pledged himself to a person—to Ragnar. Whatever Ragnar was, he had decided, that would be his own identity and desire. Ragnar, in his own turn, had slowly adopted many of the elements, cultural and personal, of his beloved, and so the two had melded somehow. This felt natural to him, and perhaps the easiest and most convenient answer to his seemingly perpetual dilemma. He certainly loved Ragnar, with nearly the same depth and intensity he loved the Divine. Yet without his counterpart nearby, Athelstan found himself questioning the choice of investing so much of himself in one person, and asking again what and who he really was and ought to be. Could he be whole without Ragnar—without anyone? What would happen to him if Ragnar should die? Beyond the issue of whether he could even survive in this world without Ragnar's sponsorship and protection, who would he be in the absence of guidance from someone to whom he could easily submit his will? Would he lose all sense of self without another to anchor him? Was he Christian or pagan? A warrior or an academic? A man out of his role, seeking the comforts and peace of family, as women were supposed to, or a man claiming a birthright of his sex, and obeying a supposed natural instinct to conquer? Lagertha had once told him how she felt an affinity with him, being a woman who sought valor in war as much as she sought the love of family and the predictable seasonal cycles of the fertile earth. As did he, she existed between the worlds of women and men. Yet of course the culture she lived in still had a place for her. Though shieldmaidens were not common, they were nonetheless generally honored here. A man such as he who preferred art to the blade? Not so much.

His shield and axe stood proudly against the wall near his bed. He had lost them when he was captured in Wessex. The axe had been taken by Ecbert's forces and eventually returned to him by the king. Ragnar later discovered that one of Horik's men had taken possession of the shield. Indeed, it was that implement of war that had in part confirmed Ragnar's suspicion that all was not as Horik had claimed. Had there really been an attack on their camp by Wessex forces, Athelstan would have taken up his weapons, and fought as hard as the rest. Only if he had fallen in battle would the shield have been claimed by another, yet Horik maintained he had no specific knowledge of Athelstan's fate.

And yet, looking at them now, having not used them in the company's most recent ventures in his homeland, they seemed to him as foreign as they would have had they been thrust upon him while he still lived a cloistered life. He had been trained in their use—he had used them to kill. In battle, when threatened, but also against innocents. The last time he had fought at all had been when Horik attempted to sack Kattegat. He had defended his home then—ultimately taking back the shield from the man who had stolen it—but had not used the weapons since.

Now, however, Ragnar was asking him to go to Paris, and again take up arms against Christians. For all that he wished to see again the beautiful island city, he quailed at the thought of the bloodshed that would be necessary to conquer it. He had confessed his reticence to Ragnar after being awash in guilt at killing a young monk in Winchester, and Ragnar had granted him a place away from the front lines, yet could he expect that again in Paris? Though his skill with the language of the Franks was rudimentary, he nonetheless would know more about them and their customs than any of the Northmen. Ragnar would want him close to the battlefront to help lead any negotiations. He might not have to slaughter any Christians himself—unless one were to attack him directly—but he would certainly at least have to witness it, and now, alone with his own conscience, he questioned whether he could really do that, even for his beloved.  He stared again at the last drawing he had done in the now-roughly-bound book: Another of Ragnar, this time holding the sword of kings. The face was as familiar to him as any he had ever encountered. He knew instinctively the feeling of the callused hands that wrapped around the sword's haft. He knew the feeling of Ragnar's breath, hot on his neck, and the sound of his voice as he murmured words of passion and devotion.

Yet something in his beloved had changed, and it was not entirely for the best. What parts of his own self had rubbed off on the king remained, but perhaps the responsibility of his position, or merely just the imminent demise of his marriage, had also made part of him cold and harsh. In the first of the drawings, Ragnar's eyes sparkled with curiosity and not a little bit of playfulness. In this, as Athelstan had recalled the face while he made the charcoal take shape, the gaze was harder. Paris, he knew, was a dream they shared, and for many of the same reasons, yet it was also becoming clear that another, perhaps less savory impulse also drove Ragnar to seek a path to the South.

He sighed in frustration and rubbed his bleary eyes. Perhaps this was his fate—his curse: To be forever torn. In another life, he would have sought guidance in confession. Here in a land where Christians were usually enemies, there was no such succor to be had. He stared into a guttering candle flame, using it to guide at least a prayer, but the words felt hollow and God seemed not to be with him to listen to them. And yet . . . As he finished the prayer, his heart fluttered as he realized there might indeed be someone who could somehow fill a role of confessor and help him finally discover the truth of himself.

He knew the Seer only in passing: the ancient one kept to himself, and tended to avoid him when their paths crossed, which was rare anyway. If a path to God were not available via a Christian priest, perhaps he could at least discover what his other gods might have to say about him.

It took but a moment to decide. Gathering a few things with which to pay the man for his prophecy, he strode out his door and into the gray afternoon.

 

The drizzle had turned into a downpour by the time he left the Seer's quarters. The fat drops soaked his hair and dripped down the back of his neck past his collar. There was a sharp chill in the air—autumn was fading—and the damp made him shiver. Yet it also calmed him. The bitter taste of the old man's ashy skin still lingered on his tongue and the mixture of frustration, shame, and embarrassment still enflamed his cheeks. That the man, though without earthly sight, had nonetheless seemed to see into the depths of his heart was unsettling. He recalled the admonishment: that he would have to give up the love of another to truly achieve spiritual peace. He feared that the Seer knew exactly to which other his heart spoke, but also a fierce defensive passion rose within him at the suggestion. A tiny voice in his head told him that his rejection of this was denial; was a selfish desire to take the easy path and merely go wherever the embrace of Ragnar's arms would take him, but he knew his feelings for his beloved were, if perhaps not spiritually mature, nonetheless real and honest. He could not—would not—bear the ache of that loss for some vague promise of an afterlife he was far from certain even existed.

Too, he rejected the Seer's insistence that he could not be whole as he was. Perhaps, he figured, for all the supposed freedom of the Northmen, they could not help but be jealous and overprotective of their culture. Floki had certainly balked at the intrusion of Christianity into his personal world. Perhaps the Seer was more like many of the Christians he had known and argued with over the years: Convinced that allowing the coexistence of cultures within his domain would result only in the destruction of his own. Certainly many of the men directing his missions had seemed to miss Jesus' words about how those called to God would come of their own accord, and must not be coerced. The words of spiritual leaders notwithstanding, Athelstan himself believed—knew in his heart—that there were many paths to the Divine. Burning all but those one was personally on would only leave more people to languish without ever reaching that goal.

It was also clear to him that such closed-mindedness could not help but tear at the edges of human compassion and love, and that had never seemed to him to be in keeping with the love of God. At the court of Charlemagne, Athelstan had met a man from the lands south of Rome who had been involved in battles for control over parts of Spain. A convert to Christianity, the man had found himself fighting against his own countrymen who still claimed the faith of his ancestry and loyalty to the Caliphates. Haunted by more than just the bloody horrors of war itself, the man warned him never to let faith override love. At the time, he had dismissed the scarred soldier as merely being tormented by the wounds of battle, but now he understood. Winning a war for the Divine never truly made up for earthly losses incurred in the process.

As the cold rain washed away his anger, the fire of defiance became replaced by a different glow: He would not succumb to those who wanted him to be a man eternally divided, but nor would he merely follow the path that Ragnar was on. His beloved had given him freedom of choice. He would take that freedom to decide what part he should play in the king's plans to attack Paris. Neither man nor god would determine his choices. They were his alone. And he had, for certain, chosen to be whole. Whatever eventually became of his body and soul, in this life, he would be true to himself, and all that he contained.

The sky had become its darkest shade of gray when he returned home. He felt weary in body and yet light in spirit. Ragnar would be back soon, he knew, and that thought gave him uncomplicated comfort for the first time in days. As he climbed under the blankets, allowing himself to relax and look to the future—a future that he alone determined—he could swear he heard the bells of the Paris cathedral.


End file.
